A measurement is presented of the ratio of the inclusive 3-jet cross section to the inclusive 2-jet cross section as a function of the average transverse momentum, <pT[1,2]>, of the two leading jets in the event. The data sample was collected during 2011 at a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 inverse femtobarns. The strong coupling constant at the scale of the Z boson mass is determined to be alphaS[MZ] = 0.1148 +/- 0.0014 (exp.) +/- 0.0018 (PDF) +/- 0.0050 (theory), by comparing the ratio in the range 0.42 < <pT[1,2]> < 1.39 TeV to the predictions of perturbative QCD at next-to-leading order. This is the first determination of alphaS[MZ] from measurements at momentum scales beyond 0.6 TeV. The predicted ratio depends only indirectly on the evolution of the parton distribution functions of the proton such that this measurement also serves as a test of the evolution of the strong coupling constant. No deviation from the expected behaviour is observed.
Measurements of the ratio of 3jet to 2jet production as a function of the mean transverse momentum of the two leading jets. The errors in the tables are statistical only with the systematic errors quoted at the top of the table. The individual sources contributing to these systematic errors are shown in the following two tables. The statistcal correlations of the measured ratios between PT bins is given in the link above.
The different contributions to the Jet Energy Scale (JES) uncertainties as described in the CMS paper Phys.Rev.D87(2013)112002. The overall JES uncertainty (quadratic sum) from these is 1.245 %.
The different contributions to the unfolding procedure uncertainties as described in this paper. The overall unfolding uncertainty (quadratic sum) from these is 0.641 %.
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